The level of threat that Internet users are exposed to continues to grow each quarter.

Earlier this week, Commtouch released Q4 2009 Internet Threats Trend Report, a 20-page document describing what the reality of Internet security is circa late 2009. Highlights of the document include:

• 312,000 zombies were activated on average each day of the quarter
• Spam levels ranged between 68% (late December) and 98% (in November), averaging at 77% throughout the quarter
• One proficient virus masqueraded in emails coming from Facebook, DHL, UPS, the government etc.
• For a sample malware (Mal-Bredo A), the time difference between it being revealed in the Commtouch security labs and other antivirus vendors was 11.77h (Microsoft), 25.88h (Kaspersky), and even larger than 98h (Symantec, TrendMicro)

If you want to take advantage of Commtouch’s international network of malware detection, one simple answer would be the new Total Email Protection service that accompanies our Syneto UTM, which will be available starting with version 1.3.0 of our product.

Release date: early February 2010.

Seeing as how this is the first post of the year, please allow me to wish all of you a great 2010, may it be better than the year we just ended.

I’ve been really quiet during the last few months, as we’ve been very busy developing, but this time I have some great news to share with you.

October last year we signed a strategic agreement with Commtouch – one of the leading providers of global email and web threat intelligence, with thousands of clients in over 190 countries. What does that mean for the Syneto family of products? It means that the level of detection of our email protection engines gained a great performance boost, effectively transforming us in a top competitor in the email security market.

Why are we announcing this only now? We wanted to wait until we were really close to releasing a product with the new technology incorporated, and that product is the next generation of our Syneto UTM – version 1.3.0, in which we integrated the Commtouch Antispam, Antivirus and IP reputation engines, along with a lot of other great enhancements to our product. I will blog more on the technical details in the following days, but I am sure you will be amazed by the progress we made.

The good news is the new version is pretty close to release, as we are entering the RELEASE CANDIDATE phase at the beginning of next week (January 18th). That means we will be releasing the final version in the first days of February. Meanwhile, if you would like to take part in the evaluation of the RELEASE CANDIDATE, please send me an email at flavius(at)syneto(dot)net and I will gladly help you obtain a copy.

As we announced in an earlier post, we are changing the way our product is documented, and also the way we collaborate with our partners and customers. We are adding 2 new functionalities to our web portal: a knowledge base and a forum.

The Syneto Knowledge Base (http://kb.syneto.net)

We have been listening to your feedback about our PDF manual and decided it was time for a change: from now on, the technical documentation will reside in electronic format in our knowledge base. What does this mean to you?

• Easier search – try searching for PPTP for instance
• Print only what you need – each article has its own print link, so you don’t have to print the whole thing or spend time chasing the page numbers
• Access from anywhere – wherever there is Internet, you get access to the Syneto knowledge
• Help us improve – each article has a “comment” section, where you can tell us if there’s something wrong or missing

The Syneto Forum (http://www.syneto.net/forum/)

We want to start hearing from you: who you are, what great achievements have you accomplished using the Syneto UTM, what problems is it causing or what you would like to see it feature. We even have an “International” section where you are encouraged to use your own mother tongue. Off-topic is also allowed: we really like blonde jokes and links to youtube videos. :)

We really hope you will enjoy our two new features and encourage you to take them for a spin: Syneto Knowledge Base, Syneto Forum.

We are preparing a surprise for you. Next week we’ll be releasing the fruits of an effort to better service the Syneto UTM users. The documentation as you now know it will be history… Think better search, easier findability and ubiquity.

Check back by the website and blog early next week to find out what we have in store for you. In the meantime, have a nice weekend!

Edit: we revealed the surprise in this post.

We are often asked when we think a certain feature or another will be implemented in our Unified Threat Management solution. To address this issue, Syneto decided you all should know what we are working on, so we created a page on the official website called Syneto UTM roadmap. There you can see what we are currently working on and what we are intending to implement in the future releases. Feel free to make suggestions, comments or feature requests by sending mail to contact [at] syneto [dot] net, or by commenting on this page.

Network&Knowledge, one of our business partners, is holding a conference titled Competing during times of economic crisis at the end of this week (4th of April) in Provaglio d’Iseo (BS, Italy).

Syneto has been invited to host a talk related to the increasing role technology plays in securing critical business intelligence data and processes. Our CEO, Mr. Marco Lorenzi will show how Syneto UTM can prevent you from losing money by blocking accidental leakage of confidential data and providing a safe and strongly encrypted environment through which data can flow.

We strongly believe our line of UTM products is a must-have for anyone transiting company related data through a network facing the Internet. Learn why and how we can keep your business intelligence data safe by reserving a place at the conference (limited seating).

Contact us for reservations (marco [at] syneto [dot] net).

Syneto and Techne Security are hosting an event to showcase our UTM technology and present the latest improvements in our rapidly growing networking product. Present on behalf of Syneto will be our CEO Mr. Marco Lorenzi, that will give a brief summary of the current situation aswell as the intentions Syneto has in the networking environment.

For full details, visit Techne Security’s website.

Later edit: Here are a few pictures from our presentation at the Modena event.

Yesterday we released a new and highly anticipated Syneto service: Remote Configuration Backup. Essentially, it takes out all the pain associated with keeping various UTM configurations on your machine, and instead holds them inside the Syneto cloud. You are allowed to store up to 10 distinct machine configurations, with the oldest getting deleted every time a new one is saved (once you reached the limit). The service is now available for our CLI-loving fans. Just do a config backup from the console and let us take it from there.

Now, for the good news: the Remote Configuration Backup service is free in 2009 for anyone who purchases a Remote Software Update license. That’s right: buy one, get the other free.

And now for a quick glimpse into the future:

This is just a quick peek into our next software release, in which, apart from bringing the configuration backup into the interface, we also integrate and consolidate the local configuration management features. Don’t tell anyone, but I also heard rumours about an Antispam Greylist feature coming your way.

We added a new screenshots page to our site to showcase the Syneto UTM. It is a quick sneak preview of what is coming in our new 1.1 release. We are very excited about it and so should you! With the beta almost out-the-door, the final version is just a matter of weeks.

But I won’t keep you waiting any longer. Here is the Syneto UTM screenshots page.

Hello and welcome to our new blog. We consider the official blog to be the next step towards bridging the gap between us, the creators of the Syneto Networking Technology, and you, our trusty audience.

So what can you expect from this blog? Official announcements, un-official teasers, technology preview and ‘behind-the-scenes’ action. We want you to know us and we would be delighted to know you better. So, don’t hesitate to leave us your comments. As always, we are thrilled to hear from you.

Together, we do networking. Simple networking.